Amazon.com Inc, which has made waves in recent years buying art-house movies at the Sundance Film Festival, is heading to the prestigious event this week with a long-term change in the works: It plans to shift resources from independent films to more commercial projects, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The move reflects a new phase in the online retailer’s entertainment strategy. Initially, Amazon worked on high-brow movies that would win awards, put it on the map in Hollywood and help it attract top talent.

Now, Amazon wants programming aimed at a far wider audience as it pursues its central business goal: persuading more people to join its video streaming service and shopping club Prime.

The change in the movie strategy parallels a similar shift in Amazon Studios’ TV operation, which is also moving to bigger-budget fare.

Amazon expects to go after films with budgets in the $50 million range at the expense of indie projects costing around $5 million, one person familiar with the plans said on the condition of anonymity. Another person confirmed the overall strategy, adding that the Culver City, California, studio is still working out the details on how much of its film budget will go to these bigger releases.

Amazon declined to comment.

The course change comes after Roy Price, who led Amazon Studios from its inception in 2010 and was a champion of projects with awards potential, resigned in October. Albert Cheng, the studio’s chief operating officer, has stepped in as interim head and is in charge of television projects, while Vice President Jason Ropell runs the film division. Both report to Jeff Blackburn, a Seattle-based senior vice president who wields broad authority at the company.

It is unclear who will permanently replace Price.

On the film side, Amazon is not moving all the way into blockbuster territory. The TV group had offered $250 million just for the rights to a fantasy prequel series of “The Lord of the Rings,” according to people familiar with the matter. That is a far more expensive project, representing a bigger change in direction than what the movie division is considering, one source said.

Nor is Amazon abandoning indie films entirely. But industry sources are unsure how active the company will be at Sundance this year. The festival’s lineup is not believed to have a standout like “Manchester by the Sea,” which Amazon bought at Sundance for $10 million and which went on to win two Oscars. Amazon and rival Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) in general have pushed up prices for such prestige fare.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, recently told at least one industry executive that it is business as usual at the movie studio, a person familiar with the matter said. At Sundance, that could mean multi-million-dollar deals for films destined for theaters, as well as small deals by a separate team – Amazon Video Direct – that offers more modest payments for a project’s online streaming rights.

Still, several filmmakers were surprised recently when the studio turned away a handful of projects with budgets up to $6 million, which they believed fit the mold of Amazon’s 2017 hit “The Big Sick,” another person familiar with the matter said.

It was not immediately clear if their rejection was due to Amazon’s new priorities.
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The South Korean public has been generally supportive of North Korea participating in the upcoming Olympics as a way to foster cooperation with its nuclear-armed neighbor, but they are divided over the decision to field a joint women’s hockey team that critics say places politics over competitive fairness.

According to a recent poll, more than 80 percent of South Koreans welcome the North’s decision to send a large delegation to the upcoming 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics in the South. But 70 percent of the public opposes the formation of a combined North, South team.

“I think it is not good. It feels like it is to show some kind of political result,” said Seoul resident Lee Hae-jun.

The decision Wednesday to add North Korean players to the South’s women’s hockey team, which has already qualified for the games, is seen by many as unfair to the players, who earned their positions.

And the South Korean hockey coach, Sarah Murray, earlier voiced concern it could leave the team at a competitive disadvantage.

“Adding somebody in so close to the Olympics is a little bit dangerous, just for team chemistry, because the girls have been together so long,” Murray said.

The International Olympic Committee and the National Olympic Committees of the two Koreas must agree to combining the women’s hockey teams before such a roster change can be made.

Video: Watch Brian Padden’s report

​Olympic goal

But for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the greater goal for this Olympics is to promote peace and eventually denuclearization with the isolated and repressive Kim Jong Un government.

“If the South and North form a united team and participate in the Olympic games, I think it will become a historic moment. Not only Koreans, but people from all over the world will be moved to see such a historic moment, and it will be a great start to resolve inter-Korean issues,” said President Moon while visiting Pyeongchang Olympics sites this week.

Though most South Koreans disagree with inserting politics into sports, some say fostering peace would be a better prize than a gold medal.

“I think they can sacrifice for a better future, and if we can live in peace with North Korea, there’s nothing better than that,” said Seoul resident Kim Joo-wook.

Since taking office in May 2017, the liberal leader in Seoul has tried to balance support for strong North Korean sanctions with increased engagement to persuade the Kim Jong Un government to enter into negotiations to end its threatening nuclear and missile programs.

​North Korea delegation

During recent inter-Korean talks, Pyongyang accepted Seoul’s invitation to join in the Olympic Games, and the two sides agreed to engage in further military talks to avoid the potential for conflict.

In addition to fielding a combined women’s hockey team, the two sides this week worked out more details regarding the more than 400-member North Korea delegation planning to visit the South for the Olympics.

These include:

North and South Korean athletes will to walk together under a special united Korea flag during the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

North Korea will send a cheering squad of around 230 members that will root for teams from both the South and the North.

North Korea will send a 30-member Taekwondo demonstration team and a large orchestra that will both perform in the Pyeongchang region and in Seoul.

North Korea will also participate in the Paralympics that immediately follow the winter games.

And skiers from both sides will train at North Korea’s Mount Kumgang mountain resort before the games.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.
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As South Korea prepares to host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang in early February, some South Korean athletes are pushing back against government efforts to showcase inter-Korean unity between North and South by fielding unified teams. South Korea’s women’s ice hockey team is the first to be singled out to include North Korean players, and this proposal is meeting opposition, as Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, the explosive best-seller about the inner workings of the Donald Trump White House, may be heading to the small screen.

The rights to Michael Wolff’s new book have been bought by Hollywood entertainment company Endeavor Content, which plans to adapt it for a television series, The Hollywood Reporter said Wednesday.

The trade publication said Wolff will be attached to the project as an executive producer, along with former BBC executive Michael Jackson.

No casting or air date has been set, but the announcement set off speculation about who would play some of the key figures in the White House.

The book, based on a series of interviews with former presidential adviser Stephen Bannon and other White House insiders, has infuriated the president, who is portrayed as an unstable, uninformed man-child with an explosive temper.

“Michael Wolf is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book,” Trump tweeted after its release.

Wolff responded: “Not only is he helping me sell books, but he’s helping me prove the point of the book.”

Fire and Fury is the first publishing sensation of 2018, selling more than 1 million copies and topping The New York Times’ best-seller list.
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In an art form dominated by men, a small organization run by four women is transforming opera with cutting-edge work.

The Prototype Festival is presenting its sixth edition this month in venues around New York. Two years ago it premiered Du Yun’s “Angel’s Bone,” a story of child trafficking that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for music. Last year it staged Missy Mazzoli’s “Breaking the Waves,” among the most acclaimed compositions of the 21st century, based on the Lars von Trier film.

This year’s typically precocious program includes Gregory Spears’ “Fellow Travelers,” adopted from Thomas Mallon’s novel about an affair involving a gay State Department official during the McCarthy era.

“The sort of standard trajectory for a composer of the past would have been to wait until they may be 40 or something and they have had lots of things under their belt and they have large institutions who are supporting them and then they get a big commission,” said Beth Morrison, Prototype’s founding director. “Well, this generation of composers wasn’t interested in that.”

Among 10 works presented through Saturday before audiences of 77 to 600 is Alicia Hall Moran’s avant-garde “Breaking Ice: The Battle of the Carmens,” mounted on an ice rink with performers and a portion of the audience on skates, a nod to Debi Thomas’ 1988 Olympic competition with Katarina Witt.

That is a stark contrast with the Metropolitan Opera, which has presented just two staged operas composed by women in its 135-year history: Ethel M. Smyth’s “Der Wald (The Forest)” in 1903 and Kaija Saariaho’s “L’Amour de Loin (Love from Afar)” in 2016.

“That alone is a cause for a revolution and a cause for real anger and outcry,” Mazzoli said. “Women are less likely to be given big risky projects than they are a 10-minute orchestral commission or a 10-minute string quartet. … Men are often given opportunities based on their potential, but women are often given opportunities based on their past experiences.”

Morrison, a former administrator at Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute and producer of New York City Opera’s contemporary showcase VOX, runs the festival with Kristin Marting and Kim Whitener of HERE, dedicated to hybrid live performances in theater, dance, music and visual art, and with Jecca Barry, the executive director of Beth Morrison Projects.

“People say that there’s just white men composers, but it’s just not true,” Marting said. “There are artists working at scale and vision of all different colors and all different genders.”

An initial $400,000 budget, half provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has risen to $750,000. Future projects include Ellen Reid’s “Prism,” which will be shown by Prototype and the LA Opera next season.

“It’s so much easier to commission John Adams. It is a household name.” Du Yun said. “For organizations like the Met, first of all they feel like they have to sell tickets, and major art presenters, they always worry about that first. So it’s like they say, `Who is big already? And who is a star name?’ They always think that our audience is not ready.”

Prototype coincides with conferences of music industry executives in New York.

“I think it’s a radical point of intervention,” LA Opera chief executive Christopher Koelsch said. “It is a genuinely experimental festival which gives opportunities to emerging artists, which is hugely important inside the ecosystem and then I think as critically creates opportunities for those works to live beyond the one-off.”

Mazzoli said women administrators are more likely to back compositions by women. “Breaking the Waves,” in which a paralyzed oil rig worker encourages his wife to have sex with other men, was first seen in 2016 at the Opera Philadelphia, where Sarah Williams is new works administrator. Mazzoli’s “Proving Up,” the story of Nebraska families trying to claim land under the Homestead Act, debuts this weekend at the Washington National Opera under artistic director Francesa Zambello.

Reid and Mazzoli founded Luna Composition Lab, a not-for-profit that pairs teenage girls with prominent female mentors who are composers. She made a connection between opera and the “Me Too” movement.

“My hope is that the focus on abuse and these sort of grotesque stories that are coming out will lead to a very productive discussion about the changing culture first,” Mazzoli said. “The next step needs to be a fundamental change in the way that women are treated, particularly in academia and large institutions, and the very culture of young men. And hopefully that will lead to a discussion of opportunity.”
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A growing number of actors are distancing themselves from Woody Allen and his next film, heightening questions about the future of the prolific 82-year-old filmmaker in a Hollywood newly sensitive to allegations of sexual misconduct.

Timothee Chalamet on Tuesday said he will donate his salary for an upcoming Woody Allen film to three charities fighting sexual harassment and abuse: Time’s Up, the LGBT Center in New York and RAINN. The breakout star of “Call Me By Your Name” announced on Instagram that he didn’t want to profit from his work on Allen’s “A Rainy Day in New York,” which wrapped shooting in the fall.

“I want to be worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with the brave artists who are fighting for all people to be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve,” said Chalamet.

Chalamet is just the latest cast member of an Allen production to express regret or guilt about being professionally associated with the director. In recent weeks, Rebecca Hall (“A Rainy Day in New York,” ”Vicky Cristina Barcelona”), Mira Sorvino (“Mighty Aphrodite”), Ellen Page (“To Rome With Love”), David Krumholtz (“Wonder Wheel”) and Griffith Newman (“A Rainy Day in New York”) have all in some way distanced themselves from Allen or vowed that they wouldn’t work with him again.

The rising chorus suggests the road ahead for Allen may be particularly challenging, even for a director whose personal controversies have for decades made him an alternatively beloved and reviled figure in movies. Financial support for the filmmaker has not previously waned in part because of the eagerness many stars have for working with a cinematic legend. But fielding a starry cast may prove increasingly difficult for Allen in a movie industry in the midst of a “Me Too” reckoning.

“If I had known then what I know now, I would not have acted in the film,” Greta Gerwig, who co-starred in Allen’s 2012 comedy “To Rome With Love,” told The New York Times last week . “I have not worked for him again, and I will not work for him again. Dylan Farrow’s two different pieces made me realize that I increased another woman’s pain, and I was heartbroken by that realization.”

Dylan Farrow, Allen’s adopted daughter, has said Allen molested her in an attic in 1992 when she was seven. Allen, who has long denied the allegations, was investigated for the incident but not charged.

Farrow has previously questioned why the “Me Too” movement hasn’t ensnarled Allen. In an op-ed published last month in The Los Angeles Times , she wrote: “Why is it that Harvey Weinstein and other accused celebrities have been cast out by Hollywood, while Allen recently secured a multimillion-dollar distribution deal with Amazon, greenlit by former Amazon Studios executive Roy Price before he was suspended over sexual misconduct allegations?”

Price, the former head of Amazon Studios, resigned in October following an allegation that he had sexually harassed television producer Isa Hackett while she was working on the Amazon series “The Man in the High Castle.”

“A Rainy Day in New York” is the fourth project for Allen with Amazon, which bet heavily on the filmmaker to help establish its film production arm as a home to auteur filmmakers. It reportedly spent $80 million to lure Allen into television to make the 2016 series “Crisis in Six Scenes.”

Amazon, which didn’t respond to queries Tuesday, also distributed Allen’s “Cafe Society” in 2016 and “Wonder Wheel,” which opened December 1. It has grossed a mere $1.4 million domestically on an estimated budget of $25 million but had more success overseas, grossing $7.8 million.

“A Rainy Day in New York,” a romantic comedy due out sometime this year, also stars Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Liev Schreiber and Elle Fanning. In his statement, Chalamet tellingly noted that due to “contractual obligations” he couldn’t comment on the long-standing allegations against Allen.

The announcement by Chalamet, a favorite Oscar contender for best actor this year, followed a similar one Friday by his co-star Hall. She said she was donating her salary from the film to Time’s Up, the recently formed initiative to combat gender inequality in the entertainment industry. “It’s a small gesture and not one intended as close to compensation,” Hall wrote on Instagram.

Some have continued to publicly support Allen, though, including Alec Baldwin.

“Woody Allen was investigated forensically by two states (NY and CT) and no charges were filed,” Baldwin said Tuesday on Twitter. “The renunciation of him and his work, no doubt, has some purpose. But it’s unfair and sad to me. I worked with Woody Allen three times and it was one of the privileges of my career.”
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A Bulgarian skier has come out of retirement for another shot at Olympic gold. He competed in Sochi under the Balkan country’s flag, but at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, he’d be a one-man team. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Curling, once a minority pastime played mostly by Scots and Canadians, will sweep onto the ice at next month’s Pyeongchang Olympics with the proud boast of being the world’s fastest-growing winter sport.

The “roaring game,” with its origins in the frozen ponds and mists of medieval Scotland, is now popping up in the sort of sunny places where ice usually comes in cubes to cool the drinks.

Qatar’s men’s curling team celebrated their first international victory last November, beating Kazakhstan on Australia’s sun-soaked Central Coast north of Sydney.

A few months earlier, Middle Eastern neighbors Saudi Arabia secured conditional membership of the World Curling Federation along with fellow-newcomers Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Portugal.

Las Vegas, in Nevada’s Mojave desert, will host the men’s world championship next April.

“You’d obviously think curling is for winter sport countries, it’s not really,” said Kate Caithness, the Scottish head of World Curling and one of only two female presidents of any Olympic sports. “You can have curling anywhere in the world.

“Give us a hall and we’ll make ice. We’ve got these new facilities where we can almost roll out a mat, plug it in, add water and freeze it,” she told Reuters from her headquarters in Perth, Scotland.

In order to be included on the full program at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, curling needed to have 30 member nations. Twenty years on and there are 60, with more to come and a growth explosion predicted.

“We’ve never been in better shape, actually,” said Caithness. “Mexico and Guyana are new members, and there’s other members in South America waiting to come on board.”

At the 2010 Games in Vancouver, curling was the most watched Winter Olympic sport on television in Brazil — a country that recently challenged Canada for a place at the men’s world championships.

There are no member nations from Africa as yet, but there has been interest with South Africa most likely to be the first on board.

Looking to Beijing

Curling is big in Korea and Japan, and the main growth areas over the next four years for a sport also known as “chess on ice” are likely to be China, host of the 2022 Olympics, and the United States.

“China is a huge, huge market for us,” Caithness said. “We’ve just signed a $13.4 million contract with a sponsor [Kingdomway Sports] in China for the next four years in the runup between now and 2022.”

Curling at those Beijing Winter Games will be held in the “Water Cube” facility that hosted swimming at the 2008 summer Olympics.

Transformed into the “Ice Cube,” the plan is to have a three sheet rink in the basement so that fans can watch the competition upstairs and try their hand at the sport downstairs.

“I’m on the 2022 IOC co-ordination commission, so I do have the inside information. I’ve been there already with the IOC,” Caithness said.

“They are going to put 300 million people through winter sport [in China] between now and 2022. … I understand they are building 500 new ice rinks. I think the sport’s going to explode.”

Sleeping giant

Starting this year, a new made-for-television World Cup will start up with four city events on three continents forming the “Road to Beijing.”

In the United States, USA Curling last year signed a sponsorship deal with Pepsico’s Frito-Lay brand Cheetos that features tight end Vernon Davis of the National Football League’s Washington Redskins.

As part of the promotion, the cheese curl snack has come up with a rap video “Teach me how to Curl” featuring curling moves and dance.

Even if Cheetos said in a statement that the deal aimed to “help raise awareness for one of America’s least participated in sports,” Caithness felt things were moving in the right direction.

“I think we’re going to see things go crazy in the United States. They’ve woken up at last,” she said.

Curling, whose tournament starts a day before the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang and runs right through to the last Sunday, can also expect more television coverage than any other sport.

To win a gold medal in men’s or women’s curling takes up to 33 hours on the field of play, with nine round robin games of three hours each followed by a semi-final and final. Pyeongchang sees the debut also of mixed doubles.

“We’ll have non-stop curling every day from dawn until dusk. We have huge TV coverage and this is really going to help our sport as well,” Caithness said.

Watch related VOA video story: 
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No assistants. No wardrobe or make up people. No lighting technicians.

That’s how Afshin Shahidi spent his most cherished moments with Prince over nearly a decade as his go-to photographer, and he included many of their more intimate encounters among 250 photos in his recent book, Prince: A Private View.

Shahidi, also known as black-ish and grown-ish actress Yara Shahidi’s dad, is a Minnesota son like the superstar. He sheds light only he could provide on Prince, who died in 2016 of an accidental drug overdose.

There was the time Prince made him tea after a photo session and the two sat and talked about Rembrandt. There was a goofy side, too, with Prince clowning in an empty airport hallway, then clicking into his trademark deadpan when outsiders materialized.

While much of Shahidi’s work captured Prince onstage or was intended for official use in tour books or fodder for his fans, it’s the quieter times that sustain the 48-year-old Shahidi.

A conversation with Afshin Shahidi:

AP: You grew up in Minneapolis and were still a kid when Prince hit it big. What was running through your mind when you first met him in person?

Shahidi: I was in junior high and high school when I became aware of Prince and he was a big departure from the kind of music that I was listening to and the things I was into. He was this gender-bending phenom who could play all these instruments. I was always a fan but I wasn’t a hardcore fan who would go to every show and knew every fact, so I jumped at the opportunity to meet him in ’93.

I was starstruck. It was the era when he had “slave” written across his face and everything about him was mysterious and amazing to me. I had moved back to Minneapolis after finishing college and I was trying to get into the film business. I was 23 and got a page asking for a film loader to work on a music video and they wouldn’t say who it was for. I didn’t know how to load film but I thought I had a few days to learn, so I said, yeah, I can do it and then they said, well we need you right now and it’s in Chanhassen. That’s where Paisley Park is so I knew it had to be for Prince. I said, OK, I’m on my way.    

​AP: Did you and Prince talk about you doing this book?

Shahidi: I had done two books with him prior to this and we had discussed a third. We did not discuss this book in particular and quite honestly it took me months to be able to even look at any of the images that I had. They brought back a lot of memories that I wasn’t ready for.   

After he passed, a lot of fans had started reaching out asking if there was anything I was going to do so I toyed with the idea. Once I could finally start looking at the pictures I started putting something together. It felt very therapeutic for me. I felt like it would be selfish to keep them to myself. I have thousands of images.

AP: Why did you stop working for Prince and what did you do during those early years?

Shahidi: I started in the capacity of a technician and slowly made my way up to being a cinematographer, photographer and more of a creative collaborator. The last time I photographed him was in 2011. We continued to stay in touch and he would call occasionally to see if I was available. A big part of stopping was my family and just keeping the schedule that was necessary to keep up with Prince, to travel internationally at a moment’s notice and all the late nights and that sort of thing.

The other part is that Prince also didn’t need as many images of himself as he did when I first started working with him because a lot of the images were being used for his online music club, which was a subscription-based thing — and he was one of the first artists to do that — so once he dismantled the music club, the need to constantly update diminished. 

AP: Was it difficult to gain his trust?

Shahidi: It was a very organic process. We built a mutual trust. He was very guarded and he was also very guarded with his image. To break through that and to then be able to capture a more authentic, less-posed Prince, where I could be in a room with him and he’s not on for the camera was pretty special and it took a little bit of time. Being on the road with someone for months at a time, you decide you really like someone a lot or you don’t like them at all. 

AP: He kept a photo of Yara on his desk at Paisley Park.

Shahidi: I didn’t really know about it until after he had passed and somebody messaged me about it. It still brings tears.

AP: How did you steal all those unguarded moments?

Shahidi: I tried to blend in. It was important for me to try and capture those. We would just be hanging out and I would pick up my camera and shoot. I think he enjoyed looking at them. 

AP: What do you think Prince got out of your friendship, not only with you but your wife and kids?

Shahidi: I think normalcy. We were just a normal Minnesota family. He enjoyed children. He liked their energy and creativity. That would put a smile on his face.

There’s a lot that still makes me sad about his passing. He’s one of the first friends that I’ve lost. He exercised regularly, he ate healthy. I never saw him abuse anything, not even alcohol. To me it was a big shock. I had hopes that Prince would honor me by coming to my funeral, not the other way around.
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British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor donated $1 million Wednesday to five charities working with refugees worldwide, in a bid to alleviate a record-breaking global displacement crisis.

Kapoor, who was born to an Indian father and Iraqi Jewish mother, won the Genesis Prize — dubbed the Jewish Nobel — last year for his commitment to Jewish values.

“Like many Jews, I do not have to go far back in my family history to find people who were refugees,” he said in a statement. “Directing Genesis Prize funds to this cause is a way of helping people who, like my forebears not too long before them, are fleeing persecution.”

The United Nations says the world is witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record, with more than 65 million people forced to flee their homes, surpassing numbers after World War II more than 70 years ago.

U.N. efforts to agree a voluntary pact on safe, orderly and regular migration suffered a setback in December when the United States quit the negotiations.

“In recent months, awareness of the plight faced by tens of millions of refugees and displaced persons worldwide has fallen significantly while the refugee crisis continues unabated,” said Kapoor, a longtime social activist.

Holocaust memorial

Kapoor, who lived in Israel briefly before settling in Britain in the 1970s, won the Turner Prize in 1991 and created a Holocaust memorial for London’s Liberal Jewish Synagogue.

Winners of the Genesis Prize, which is granted by the Israeli government, award $1 million to charities of their choice, with the aim of inspiring the next generation of Jews.

One of Kapoor’s grantees is the International Rescue Committee, which is working with refugees in Uganda — home to more than 1 million people who have fled war in South Sudan — and with stateless Rohingya in Myanmar.

He is also providing food for refugees in Greece and France and medical care for Syrian refugees.

Previous winners include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and actor Michael Douglas. The 2018 winner, Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman, plans to focus her award funds on promoting women’s equality.
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Next month’s Winter Olympics is the immediate focus for Sweden but the country is already training its next generation of winter sports athletes in special high school programs that combine sports and education for ambitious teenagers.

At the Jamtlands Gymnaisum high school in Ostersund, some 550 kilometers (340 miles )north of Stockholm, promising young skiers and biathletes are put through their paces four mornings a week by highly-qualified coaches at a local ski stadium.

They return to school at lunchtime, piling their plates high with pasta and salad in the cafeteria before heading to the classroom to catch up on their studies.

And when they are done in the classroom, they head back to the gym to work on their strength and conditioning before finishing their homework and heading for bed at the end of a long day.

It sounds like a gruelling schedule, but for those taking part it is a dream way to spend their school years.

“It’s very important, it feels like this is my life,” Julia Albertsson, a budding cross-country skier, told Reuters after strapping on her skis for her morning training session.

“You feel like you’re not just a person, you’re a cross-country skier. Right now it’s the most important thing,” she said before setting off at a blistering pace under the watchful eyes of coach David Engstrom.

Application period

“Eventually, we want them to reach the elite. It’s a very long way, and this is just the start of that long road,” Engstrom said as the skiers raced away.

“We’ve just completed an application period, and I’d say we take in around eight (athletes) every year. It’s up to themselves how good they can be.

“They decide the level of ambition, and how much time they put into training and everything else they need to become really good.”

Albertsson and the cross-country students train alongside the school’s biathletes, who are coached by Jean-Marc Chabloz, a four-time Olympian from Switzerland who has made his home in the area.

“We have good clubs in the area who work with young people, so we have them served up to us on a silver platter,” Chabloz said as he gave the teenagers shooting tips.

Despite his own Olympic history, where he took part in the Games in Albertville, Lillehammer, Nagano and Salt Lake City, the 50-year-old said it was not essential for him that the athletes go on to compete at the Games, or in the World Cup.

“I wouldn’t say that’s what drives me as a coach, it’s more about creating a platform so that they can move on in their sporting lives, or in something else. But obviously it’s great when they succeed in sport,” he explained.

School sporting director Michael Soderkvist and his team of teachers and coaches look after the student athletes, making sure they stay focussed on their studies as well as their dreams of representing Sweden at a future Olympics.

“The goal is to give students a chance to get an education, and in combination to see how far you can get with your sporting talent,” Soderkvist said.

Wrestling with maths

Back in the classroom, some of the student athletes wrestle with mathematics while those with no lessons scheduled sit on sofas in common areas, catching up on schoolwork or talking through the competitions they took part in at the weekend.

Aside from winter sports, the school offers a number of other pursuits such as soccer, basketball and fencing.

The local soccer club in Ostersund, which the school is in regular contact with, is set to meet Premier League giants Arsenal in the last 32 of the Europa League in February.

For Soderkvist, Sweden’s long-held tradition of making both sport and education accessible to all is the secret behind the success of the programs offered by similar schools, where there are no tuition or coaching fees.

“If we compare it to the States, where most of the sports are in college or schools or the private market, it’s very much different here. Because of this culture with no-profit clubs, many people can afford to do sport.” Soderkvist said.

The school is one of many with such programs all over Sweden, and every year dozens of athletes from the age of 16 and upwards apply to attend.

The handful of chosen athletes aim to follow in the footsteps of Charlotte Kalla, who had a similar high school education before going on to win multiple Olympic gold medals, and will head to Pyeongchang as one of the country’s brightest medal hopes.

Julia Albertsson is typical of the well-mannered, conscientious teenagers attending the school, and though she could never be described as cocky or arrogant, the 17-year-old is crystal clear about her burning ambition to emulate Kalla.

“You work successively, year after year, to be better, and in the end you want to get to the Olympics,” she said.
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